1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to sharing a configuration space across multiple components of a subsystem.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various devices including but not limited to personal computer systems, desktop computer systems, laptop and notebook computers, tablet or pad devices, digital cameras, digital video recorders, and mobile phones or smart phones may include subsystems that implement various functionalities. As just one example, a device may include an apparatus (e.g., an integrated circuit (IC), such as a system-on-a-chip (SOC), or a subsystem of an IC), that may receive and process digital video input from one or more sources and output the processed video frames according to one or more video processing methods. Such a subsystem may include multiple functional components or units that each performs a sub-operation or sub-operations of the subsystem. For example, a video encoder or other apparatus or subsystem may include a pipeline for processing digital frames or portions of frames, the pipeline composed of multiple functional units or components that each performs one or more operations on a frame or portion of a frame passing through the pipeline. In many such subsystems that include multiple functional components, a configuration space may be shared across the components. In other words, there may be one or more global configuration parameters that are common to many or all of the components of a subsystem. The shared configuration space of the components of a subsystem may need to be periodically or aperiodically set or reset by an external entity such as a control program execution on processor(s) of the subsystem. For example, in a pipeline of a video processor such as a video encoder, the configuration of the components may need to be set or reset on frame boundaries.